Never-Ending Green Disasters.

Newton’s 3rd law of motion, if applied to bureaucracy, would state: “Whenever politicians attempt to force change on a market, the long-term results will be equal and opposite to those intended”.

This law explains the never-ending Green energy policy disasters.

Greens have long pretended to be guardians of wild natural places, but their legislative promotion of ethanol biofuel has resulted in massive clearance of tropical forests for palm oil, sugar cane and soy beans.Their policies have also managed to covert cheap food into expensive motor fuel and degraded land devoted to bush, pastures or crops into mono-cultures of corn for bio-fuel. This has wasted water, increased world hunger and corrupted the political process for zero climate benefits.

Greens also pretend to be protectors of wildlife and habitat but their force-feeding of wind power has uglified wild places and disturbed peaceful neighbourhoods with noisy windmills and networks of access roads and transmission lines. These whirling bird-choppers kill thousands of raptors and bats without attracting the penalties that would be applied heavily to any other energy producers – all this damage to produce trivial amounts of intermittent, expensive and blackout-prone electricity supplies.

Greens have long waged a vicious war on coal, but their parallel war on nuclear power and the predictably intermittent performance of wind/solar energy has forced power generators to turn to hydro-carbon gases to backup green power. But Greens have also made war on shale-gas fracking – this has left countries like Germany with no option but to return to reliable economical coal, or increase their usage of Russian gas and French nuclear power. Their war on coal has lifted world coal usage to a 44 year high.

Greens also say they support renewable energy, but they oppose any expansion of hydro-power, the best renewable energy option. For example, they scuppered the Gordon-below-Franklin hydro-electric project, which would have given Tasmania everlasting cheap green electricity. But they never mention their awkward secret – the Basslink under-sea cable goes to Loy Yang power station in Victoria and allows Tasmania to import coal-powered electricity from the mainland.

Viv Forbes is a geologist , financial analyst and farmer with a degree in Applied Science (geology, physics, chemistry and maths). Since graduation he has studied economics, politics, climatology, soil science, financial analysis, grazing management, hydrology and animal nutrition. He has worked for government departments, private companies and his own business. He has written widely on political, technical and economic subjects. He was awarded the “Australian Adam Smith Award for Services to the Free Society” in 1988, and was chosen as Friedrich Naumann Foundation's "Author of Freedom" in September 2012. He should be retired but is a non-executive director of a small Australian coal exploration company and lives with his wife Judy on their sheep and cattle breeding property at Rosevale in Queensland, Australia. He was the founder of the Carbon Sense Coalition.